Trace every batch of food from raw intake to dispatched pack, with each check kept on the record.

Food plants turn field produce into packed goods, and the batch is the thread that ties every stage together from the gate to the dock. A rice mill takes in paddy by the truck and records moisture and head rice yield, while a spice maker cleans, grinds and blends chilli, turmeric and coriander. A bakery fires ovens, a snack line fries, and a frozen food plant adds a blast freezer and a cold chain that cannot break.

Quality checks run through all of them. Moisture, net weight, metal detector tests, core temperature and sensory panels are taken at set points and signed by the person who did them. Packs carry a batch code and a best-before date. Retailers ask which lots went where. Auditors ask for the same sheets.

Yield and shelf life decide the margin in every one of these plants, and both depend on what happens before the line starts. Paddy, wheat and chilli vary from one supplier to the next, and finished stock ages on the pallet or in the cold store. Supermarket and food service buyers repeat the same questions each season about origin, lot and storage. Whatever a buyer is told later rests on what the weighbridge clerk typed at the gate, so that first entry decides the answer.